Art as Breath

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! (Ps 150:6)

One Monday morning when I was fourteen, I learned that a fellow classmate’s lung had collapsed over the weekend and he had died. He had apparently complained of not feeling well at a Friday football practice, and lot of the other athletes had teased him about his frequent asthmatic complaints, blowing him off. None of us fellow students, whether we were the ones bullying him or not, had recognized our true vulnerability to constricted breath before then—or the many serious conditions that could cause it.

Many of us went to his funeral. I had been to a funeral before, but never open casket and never of someone so young. I have now forgotten many of my large class of high school graduates, but I have never forgotten the waxen face of this young man, nor the heavy emptiness of a body that can no longer draw breath.

When I think about the necessity of art for the church, I think about that student. We are all at risk, spiritually speaking, whether we know it or not, of losing the ability to draw in air. So many aspects of our culture, our environment, and our families compress our lungs until we shut down and turn to wax, heavily empty. But whether from pain or joy or an astonishment at beauty, the surprise we find through art can jolt our hearts awake again to the reality of God, if we are God-seeking. And when the heart restarts its pumping, we gasp anew for his life-giving breath.

Art as a Language of Praise

There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me. (1 Cor 14:10–11)

We are whole beings, not rational robots. We must breathe and worship with our whole being. Art helps us do that.

In many ways, art, in all its forms, is merely another language we use, an intuitive one, with a vocabulary peculiar to each medium. This art language engages the intuitive brain, and the intuitive brain builds its storehouse of knowledge through patterns of experience. We might talk about “understanding something intuitively” and think we mean “instinctually,” but instinct is an innate, reactive process, while intuition is direct cognition achieved primarily through sensory and experiential input and memory that bridges “the gap between the conscious and nonconscious parts of our mind, and also between instinct and reason.”[1] Even though intuition occurs quickly, without the analytic processing we often label “thinking,” intuition is still learned and developed, still a way of conscious knowing that we can analyze.

God created us to exercise both rational and intuitive processes as our full form of expression. Thus the psalmist writes,

My lips will shout for joy,

     When I sing praises to you;

     My soul also, which you have redeemed. (Ps 71:22)

In earlier verses, the psalmist recounts the content of praise on his lips: “You have given the command to save me,” “You, O Lord, are my hope,” “You are my strong refuge,” “My mouth will tell of your righteous acts,/ of your deeds of salvation all the day,/ for their number is past my knowledge” (vv.  3, 7, 15). These are praises based in rational thought and analysis. Because God has come through in the past, the psalmist will praise him “yet more and more” even though the situation looks overwhelming (14).

Yet the parallel construction in this line inextricably links soul praise to rational praise. The Hebrew term soul (nephesh) is complex, yet generally we can define the concept of soul “as the centre and transmitter of feelings and perceptions.”[2] Thus the joyful, rational words the psalmist expresses spill out in concert with a perception of inclination toward God, of Godward movement through the inner will and emotions and music. The soul (which God has saved along with the body and mind described in earlier verses) praises through both rational concepts and emotive notes. The connection between a rational expression of praise with a soul-initiated expression of praise is unmistakable.

The apostle Paul, too, declares the necessity for whole-being worship:

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also. (1 Cor 14:14–15)

As God is both Logos—the rational Word—and spirit (John 1:1; 4:24), his creatures are to pray and praise with both reason and spirit. The Greek term for spirit (pneuma) is also complex, and the fullness of the concept differs from the Hebrew nephesh. But a facet of spirit is like that of soul: “the source and seat of insight, feeling, and will, gener[ally] as the representative part of human inner life.”[3] Unlike the psalmist, Paul reverses the order of mind and soul. By starting with “sing praise with my spirit” followed by “my mind also,” he emphasizes the emotional, ecstatic nature of praise, yet acknowledges we must also understand our emotions and what we praise through art with reason.

Musician and former dean of Wheaton Conservatory, Harold Best describes this interworking nature of reason and intuition as a “vast synthesis,” of “the thinking heart and the expressive mind.”[4] We often think of the power of the arts as creating a high-powered emotional burn. But I return to the idea that many of us in the church, even the redeemed who have met the living Lord, exist daily as wax, heavily empty. I wonder if we have, as the football bullies did, missed the reason why. Some factions of the church stake their claim on the rock of rational truth alone and die of emotional thirst while others swim in an ocean of emotion-chasing, far from the solid ground of reason. Reason and intuition must work together holistically and with balance (along with faith and the Spirit) to create well-being. We require both the thinking heart and the expressive mind to generate full-being praise. Studies show that an attitude of gratitude greatly improves physical and mental health.[5] I suspect that full-being praise greatly improves spiritual health as well.

 Notice that God gave us a Bible in both Hebrew (a more sensory, concrete, intuitive language) and Greek (an abstract, philosophical, rational language). He asks us to know him through epistolary explanations of his character as well as through poetry, story, and the patterns we see in the created universe. He gives words and law for his people to use in the temple, and he also surrounds them there with visual art (tapestry, sculpture, architecture), performance art (song, ritual dramas, storytelling) and sensory symbols (incense, light, burnt offerings and bread) to communicate who he is. We are responsible to know him through all these media, these cognitive languages, and to return praise back to him through them:

Praise the LORD!

     Sing to the LORD a new song,

     His praise in the assembly of the godly!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Let them praise his name with dancing,

     Making melody to him with tambourine and lyre (Psalm 149:1, 3)

In the church’s corporate gathering, the sermon most naturally addresses the impulses and processes of our rational mind and is necessary for growth and discipleship. We must know what God’s Word says and the rational truth of whom we worship. Yet we must also worship in spirit, and love God with all our soul (John 4:23; Deut 6:5). To do so, we must be reborn in the Spirit, yes, but we must also engage with God and know him through our intuitive self. The arts most naturally addresses the impulses and processes of our intuition, and therefore, also become necessary for growth and discipleship.

Neither preaching nor the arts function purely as reason or intuition; in fact, I am arguing that both should engage both sides of the intellect, and both mind and soul. Each helps us grow our vocabulary in its primary language, and so both are necessary. Otherwise, as Paul says about the problem of uninterpreted tongues, “If I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me” (1 Cor 14:11).

Scripture calls us to learn the language of art so we can praise God with our mind as well as our spirit. When we diminish either aspect, we diminish our praise. And when we diminish our breathing out, we make shallow our breathing in.

How do you praise God through art and the creation of art?

Are you aware of directing your inward parts toward God in gratefulness for beauty, salvation, or corrective discipline as you sing, paint, write, and pray? How might you become more mindful as you work?

Intuition as the Language of Perception and Trust

When the body has an injury, muscles around that place tend to cramp or constrict in order to protect the injured tissue. When we feel anxious, defensive, or insecure, our body posture also constricts and collapses inward. Both problems, the injury and the emotional distress, restrict our breathing. Similarly, when we wear fear, guilt, shame, or anger, we collapse spiritually and shut off the conduits that connect us with the Spirit. The antidote to this spiritual asthma, as with a physical injury, is to reopen the airways. We reopen our lungs not only with praise but with trust.

Since God formed us with both intuitive and rational processing, both have purpose and value. In fact, our rational sense so much depends on the intuition that lies at the edge of our subconscious that we must pay attention and train our intuition so that we can act more rationally.[6]

Our intuition makes instantaneous judgment calls all the time based on previous learning. We know without proof someone is lying. Why? Because our intuitive mind assesses body language, facial expressions, and tone and compares what we sense to stored experience. We also intuit whether someone is worthy of our trust.

Is our intuition always right? No. Just as our rational cognition goes off course when we rely on bad data and false logic, intuitive cognition goes off course through overgeneralization of narrow data (extrapolated patterns), a need to create patterns where none exist, and a reliance on poor interpretations of what we experience. As with our understanding of the unseen spiritual world, our perception of our relational, physical world occurs through a foggy filter, a dim, imperfect mirror (1 Cor 13:12). But intuition is learned and can be developed.

Intuition has an emotional language, but it is valid form of knowing. It's the knowing that helps us “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps 34:8). Testing and experiencing God's actions and making a judgment of goodness is primarily an intuitive process. We might think that we rely on our rational judgment to decide who to trust, but according to Jonathan Haidt, moral psychology studies show that our rational judgment tends to follow our intuition, our gut-reaction. Our intuition makes a snap assessment based on experience and sensory input. We have a tendency to then adjust our rational arguments to support our intuition rather than to analyze our intuitive judgment and change course.[7]

 Determining trustworthiness, then, or at least deciding to trust, depends much more on intuition and perceiving motive than weighing words or actions. Here, again, art and its intuitive language can come to our aid. Rarely will we trust another without an intuitive, emotional-language assent. When we read the artful stories of God, we see patterns of God’s goodness. We intuit his faithfulness and his long-suffering mercy. Yes, the text also describes these aspects of God’s character in rational words, but in order for us to believe these statements, we have to recognize the pattern of his action, see his body language, hear his tone of voice; we have to read between the lines. Even though we worship an unseen God that is spirit, Scripture gives us a window into his “corporealness” through metaphor and poetic devices, imagery that allows us to connect his character with truths from our physical, corporeal experience. And incarnated Jesus fulfills our need to intuitively trust rather than trust[8] through reason alone most of all:

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (John 14:9)

Jesus calls on Philip to trust him based on intuition (John 14:1–14). When Philip asks for a special window to see and believe and trust the Father, Jesus says, “I’m it! What you have experienced concretely and with all your senses and perception of me perfectly matches the pattern of my Father, who you can perceive though not yet see.”

 In the poetic psalms, lament is powerful and important, especially in the ways it connects with those whose lungs are collapsing from pain and fear. As you read the lament psalms in Scripture (e.g., Pss 22, 35, 42)[9] also notice that the psalmist always turns again to hope in God. The same psalmist who sobs in verse 1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” (Ps 22:1), sings the following by verse 22:

I will tell of your name to my brothers;

   in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:

You who fear the LORD, praise him!

   All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him,

   and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!

For he has not despised or abhorred

   the affliction of the afflicted,

and he has not hidden his face from him,

   but has heard, when he cried to him. (Ps 22:22–24)

Rather than remain in despair throughout, “the lament psalm . . . contains a reversal and even a recantation: the poet begins by asserting that his situation is hopeless, and he ends with confidence.”[10]

How and why are we to have confidence in God? By remembering who he is and what he has done. By turning both our rational mind and our intuitive mind to praise and trust of God’s character. By remembering, in the midst of pain, not just the content of our faith but what it feels like to believe and hope, to direct our intuitive confidence Godward.

Art, both in the making of artifacts and engaging with them, helps us rehearse this confidence, cementing our trust as we experience the act of confident praise and gratefulness again and again. Many might think here of artifacts that communicate more specifically with our everyday language, such as the poet’s words or the drama’s principle message that directly points to God’s glory. But consider how even the most “unworded” artifact might help an artist rehearse divine trust in Yahweh if made by a person of faith. Let’s take a clay pot: As the potter turns the wheel, she intuitively knows that the spin of the wheel and the spin of the earth both come from the Creator’s hand. She comprehends some of the care the Potter uses to mold and shape her from the care she uses with her own clay. The pot itself may forever sit inert and mute, merely an object of beauty, but in forming the clay as an act of worship, the potter herself finds herself filled with breath and life.

How might your art help you rehearse your confidence in God?

Art as a Language of Worship

Art helps us learn the full language of praise, and art helps us rehearse the language of trust. To understand how art is a language of worship, we must first understand the nature of worship. Harold Best, reminds us that “nobody does not worship.”[11] By that phrase, he means to say that “because God is the Continuous Outpourer,” we “were created continuously outpouring.”[12] He adds,

Note that I did not say we were created to be continuous outpourers. Nor can I dare imply that we were created to worship. This would suggest that God is an incomplete person whose need for something outside himself (worship) completes his sense of himself. It might not even be safe to say that we were created for worship, because the inference can be drawn that worship is a capacity the can be separated out and eventually relegated to one of several categories of being. I believe it is strategically important, therefore, to say that we were created continuously outpouring—we were created in that condition, at that instant, imago Dei.[13]

Therefore, he says, art, too, is necessarily an act of worship:

If outpouring is continuous, and if the first task for Christians is to fill their living with a continuum of offerings, then it follows that the making of art is likewise a Godward action. Christian artists, therefore, must understand from the start that their art, whatever its kind, venue or quality, is as much an act of worship as is preaching the gospel. Knowing this first of all, before they pick up brush or chisel, is of supreme importance. The more Christian artists understand that artistic action is nothing other and nothing less than pouring perfume on Jesus’ feet, the more they will be refreshed and liberated in their imagining and crafting.[14]

But too often we mistake the nature of worship’s driving force. We must get the order right between worship and action, and between worship and art. Consider that “we act because we worship, not the reverse. To believe the latter is to realign with bald-faced legalism, and legalism is just a nicer word for idolatry.”[15] Because we worship something, we act in accordance with it. The object of our worship determines the nature of our actions.

The same concept is true about art: “We make and offer art because we worship; we should not make it to lead us into worship.”[16] Is Best now just quibbling over how we describe what we do? I don’t think so. He makes a couple important points that should cause us to stop and think: First, as continuously outpouring beings, we cannot start and stop worship. Therefore no music or artistic device can start or facilitate worship either. And second, the intuition-engaging, emotion-feeding power of the arts and music is not the same as the Spirit’s presence or power, yet we seem to often confuse the two. Common language of the church and churchgoers regarding music and worship conflates our emotional transportation into praise or some kind of sublime state with the divine presence. Best writes,

This thinking lies behind comments of this kind: “The Lord seemed so near during worship time.” “Your music really helped me worship.” And to the contrary: “I could not worship because of the music.” These comments, however innocently spoken, are dangerous, even pagan.[17]

Our emotional ecstasy is not the Spirit; God is not an endorphin rush. Heaven forbid that we should worship it rather than him! That reversal is exactly what Best wants us to guard against—worshiping art and the experience of art rather than God. But our worship of God should definitely lead us to a powerful, faith-filled experience of art. Our worship of God should lead us to pour ourselves out as living sacrifices to him in every arena, offering to him all that we are and do. Such worship is freedom!

I recently needed to search stock photos for an image that would represent Christian worship. Page after page of photographs gave me insight. For all the ways we might show humans in a photo, two postures repeatedly communicated “worship”: the prostrating of our head and upper body in grateful submission and the lift of the head and vulnerable opening of the chest, shoulders, and arms in adoring trust. Both postures, literally and figuratively, give room for breath. But the postures aren’t what fill the lungs; it’s what we breathe in that does that. Art and praise give us a posture; we fill our lungs with what—or who—we worship. We can worship many things to breathe in smoke and mirrors. Only Jesus offers the breath of life.

How might you see all your imagining and crafting as an outpouring to God? How does knowing that our worship drives our art change your perspective on what you do?

Conclusion: Trusting Praise and God’s Presence

Jesus told the Jewish leaders, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39–40). If the Scriptures themselves, which reveal God, cannot save, then how much less art? The one who does not know Jesus will not be driven to give him thanks because of a song, no matter how beautiful, while the one who does know him can worship him through the most meager works of art. It is the revealed God who saves, not the agency by which he reveals himself.

Yet without art, we close off a primary means through which we communicate to the one we worship, the way we bring our full selves into community with him. We do not need art to have God’s presence in us, but the language of art can help us comprehend God’s presence more holistically, trust him more implicitly, and know how to recognize his joy. And God’s presence should give rise to praise.

Praise opens the soul. Thanksgiving opens the lungs. Both remind us to breathe in the sustaining life God has for us: him.

[1] “What Is Intuition, And How Do We Use It?,” Psychology Today, accessed November 20, 2019, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-intuitive-compass/201108/what-is-intuition-and-how-do-we-use-it.

[2] HALOT, s.v. “נֶפֶשׁ,” 2:713.

https://accordance.bible/link/read/HALOT#12243

[3] BDAG, s.v. “πνευμα,” 833.

https://accordance.bible/link/read/BDAG#18366

[4] Harold M. Best, Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 119.

[5] For example: Patrick L. Hill, Mathias Allemand, and Brent W. Roberts, “Examining the Pathways between Gratitude and Self-Rated Physical Health across Adulthood,” Personality and Individual Differences 54, no. 1 (January 1, 2013): 92–96, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.08.011; “How Gratitude Changes You and Your Brain,” Greater Good, accessed November 21, 2019, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_gratitude_changes_you_and_your_brain.

[6] For more on this concept, read Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Vintage Books, 2013).

[7] Tom Woods, The Rider & the Elephant - Jonathan Haidt on Persuasion and Moral Humility, accessed September 19, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24adApYh0yc.

[8] I’m using the word trust as it means “confidence in someone” rather than “faith,” but really are the two so different? How do we come to a saving faith but that we rationally assent to the truth of who Jesus is and we move toward him in full confidence in our heart and soul that he can save us? The Spirit does this work, but he does it through both our rational and intuitive minds. Both must assent or we have no true faith.

[9] Lament comprises about one-third of the Psalms.

[10] “Lament Psalms,” Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, 484-485.

[11] Harold M. Best, Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 17.

[12] Best, 22.

[13] Best, 23.

[14] Best, 112.

[15] Best, 112.

[16] Best, 119.

[17] Best, 119.